: The Offspring is not going after Napster

4-24-00
5:15 PM PST antiGUY

The Offspring
were shocked to discover that Metallica's lawyer had named them as one
of the artist that may bring lawsuits against Napster. The comments attributed
to Howard King, the attorney for Metallica and Dr. Dre were printed in
Wired Magazine. The band quickly printed a statement on their official
site refuting the claim.

"At
no time have we thought about or discussed taking any legal action against
Napster. The suggestion that we would is a complete fabrication by an attorney."

For
their part the Offspring continue their long standing support of MP3 files.
In their statement they wished to reassure fans of that fact with the following,
"We have been very vocal about the spreading of MP3 files. We happen to
be of the school of thought that it is nice to have more, not less fans."

To
get their point across the band also announced plans to post several exclusive
mp3 files to their official site in the near future "as a sign of how much
we love our music getting into the hands of our fans.